Anyone who actively views the CrossFit Games leaderboard knows that a lot of athletes hold out posting their results until Monday. Miranda Oldroyd sums it up pretty nicely with her tweet.
@CrossFit girls are CRAZY!! 19 of the 30 people who were ahead of me last week have not posted!!! #iknowyoubitcheshavedoneit #nowimcrazy
— Miranda O. (@CrossFitMiranda)
It’s like Ebay/Auction Sniping
“Auction sniping is the practice, in a timed online auction, of placing a higher bid than the current highest public bid at the last possible moment (often seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper.” –Wikipedia
Pro: It’s Effective
When you post your score early, you put a target on your back. Now all your competitors know what score they need to beat. And most athletes do better when they know what score they have to beat. They may think their score is pretty good, until they see that you beat them by 3 reps. And then they redo it, and beat you. If you wouldn’t have posted early, they wouldn’t have felt the need to redo it. And then when 5pm rolled by, you would have won.
Con: Somewhat Boring & Mentally Weak
Monday is always exciting because you know a whole bunch of results are yet to come. However, this reality also leads me to not take the leaderboard seriously the majority of the week.
The real con is that it makes athletes mentally weak, because rather than seeing how hard you can push yourself, you are taking the easy way out by chasing a score. If you can’t push yourself without a rabbit in front of you, there’s a problem. This might lead to a mental weakness that gets exposed later, maybe even during The CrossFit Games.
Case in Point: James “OPT” Fitzgerald and Brett “AFT” Marshall during the 2007 CrossFit Games. Throughout the year, as evidenced by many crossfit.com comment threads, AFT would regularly beat OPT on the main site WOD. OPT normally worked out in the morning, and AFT would always have a score to beat when he worked out in the afternoon. At the 2007 CrossFit Games, OPT came in first place, with AFT just behind in second.
Authors: @MoeNaqvi & Jonathan Kinnick
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